Bail Bond System

To put it in a simple way, bail is the refundable exchange of cash, bond, or property between the court and the arrestee in return of the freedom of the arrestee until the trial date. [1] Bail exists not for the courts to make money but to allow arrestees who are in jail awaiting trial for a non-capital crime an opportunity to go back to their communities while leaving a personal interest with the court. [2] The personal interest that the arrestee left with the court will ensure that the arrestee will come back to the court on the trial date and not flee. [2] In felonies and some misdemeanors allowing an offender the privilege to pay a bail and go free until trial is up to the discretion of the judge, if for some reason the judge suspects that

The bail bond is more like third party that acts as a financial institution that pays the bail on behalf of the arrestee. The way bail bond system works is by making the arrestee pay upfront a nonrefundable percent to the bail bond company, this percent is usually 10% of the whole amount of the bail. [4] Then, the bail bond company pays the bond to the court and when the arrestee goes to his or her trial date the bond company will received the full amount of the bail they posted to the court for the released of the arrestee, so basically the bail bond company at the end receives all of its money back plus they get to keep the nonrefundable 10% that the arrestee paid up front. [4] There has been a lot of debates about the bail bond system because it is not for the benefit of indigent people because at the end indigent arrestees end up paying more than affluent arrestees who are able to pay for their bond themselves. In my opinion, I think that the author of the article is correct about describing the bail bond system as archaic. I think that the use of bounty hunters to apprehend offenders who did not show up for court just so that the bail bond company can get their money back from the court reminds me of something that I would watch on an old west movie. To me it seems that this should be the job of law enforcement because bounty hunters would be more tempted to break constitutional laws in the process of searching and apprehending suspects because the difference between bounty hunters and law enforcement is that that bounty hunters will not get paid if they do not apprehend the offender, law enforcement will get paid regardless therefore their personal interest will not be involved which will allowed law enforcement to follow everything by the book and be less tempted to break constitutional